Forgiveness
by Chiikara
Summary: IN PROGRESS, yaoi. KuroFay KuroFai, SPOILERS. Acid Tokyo arc. Blood is life, and in it is thoughts and dreams and memories. When Fay takes his first drink of blood from Kurogane, he sees more than he bargained for.
1. Dreams of Love

**FORGIVENESS**

_I can't forgive him for letting me live. If I do forgive him...I'll be even closer to him._

-Fay

Everything was a blur, a charade of colors and sounds and voices saying all the wrong things, and when he woke up he realized that the world had gone terribly wrong – that _he_ had gone terribly wrong. Somebody was supposed to die yesterday and it should have been him – his body, his soul – but instead it was just his humanity, gone in one foul swoop, whisked away with a single blue eye and far too much blood to be real.

He caught sight of the man he thought he could play like a finely tuned instrument, the man he knew, subconsciously, was really the one controlling _him_, like a puppet on a string. Turning the earth upside down, one step at a time, one word at a time, one sideways, dark-eyed glance at a time.

Glowering but caring…how did it happen like this?

The puzzle pieces weren't fitting together because the ends were wet and shriveled with blood and the colors were faded and this wasn't how things were supposed to happen – he knew the journey would be painful but never like this, never living when he should have been dead, never surviving this far when it meant that others had to suffer because of it.

He was a burden.

There were many paths he saw, stretched ahead of him, seeming endless, all different colors and shapes, some winding and some sharp and some straight. He blinked slowly, taking in the scene before him – taking in the _man _before him, and decided, like the weak person he had convinced himself he was, that he was going to take the easiest path he could find for himself. He was going to run.

Fay straightened his back. He curved his lips upward as best he could, he closed his eyes and tilted his head a little, trying to fall back into that actor's place, trying to make everything work, even though he knew something would fall apart as soon as the words escaped his mouth;

"Good morning. Kurogane."

- - - - -

The situation had been set before him in layman's terms. Don't get to close to him, please don't get to close to him, but somehow, get close enough to draw blood. Drink the blood, they said, you need the blood to live…as if living really mattered anymore, as if he had a damn choice in the whole thing.

Kurogane was quieter now. He didn't look at him directly as often anymore, and when he did it was that twisted stare, that 'why are you doing this?' sort of proclamation in his charcoal eyes. To be honest, (as far as honestly goes, which was never very far in his book) he didn't know why he was doing this. But at the same time, he knew perfectly well.

_Distance._ It was all he had left. Death…it should have been his, their key to stop Syaoran, his small gift to them…and a gift to himself, that final promise of peace. Relieved of something they never really needed in the first place. But Kurogane had outdone himself and taken that twisted road Fay had refused before, had cut his wrist and mixed the blood and let it drip into his lax mouth like the sweet poison he had never tasted before, the sin and the passion and the very beauty of human life in the form of liquid. Something had happened, something he couldn't remember very well – _memories_ – he almost laughed out loud bitterly to think he could have received memories in blood, especially when Sakura was searching so desperately to receive memories of her own. But it was a worn memory, something he could toss aside easily, if he chose to.

And yet, when he tried to forget it, it merely stuck to him like glue, insistent and haunting.

_Your life is different now, you're a bird in a cage, you're a burden._

The thoughts swirled and spiraled and changed form every few hours, sometimes minutes, sometimes seconds and bare moments and precious pieces of time he could never fully grasp in his hands. Kurogane found him several times and seemed to try and find the right way to tell him that he needed to drink, that he needed to open his damn mouth and let the blood flow again, but Fay avoided him. Again and again, he avoided him.

He was getting quite good at it.

- - - - -

Fay had heard of vampires before. They were somewhat of a legend – a fairy tale – in the place where he had once lived. He had heard that they could turn to smoke, that they could pass through keyholes, that they were afraid of silly things like garlic and crosses and other such nonsense. He heard they had no reflection, that they could never see their gaunt faces except for in the eyes of other vampires. Fay had taken his share of wonder in the stories, then let them pass over him and moved on, as it was customary to do, because in the end they were just fairy tales, nothing to bother himself with unless he was bored and needed to hear a story from someone nearby who was willing to tell.

Now he stood with a tiny hand mirror in his hand, turning the reflective side away from him so that it lay on his lap. At first he wasn't sure why he was so afraid to look in that mirror. He thought it was some subconscious fear born from hearing too many of those fairy tales, too many silly stories burned into his head…but thinking further he realized that the fear was in himself – he didn't want to see his new face. He didn't want to see how white it had become, or the terrible darkness where his eye had once been, or the tiny fang teeth, dormant in their current state, that lay beneath his lips, where he knew he could feel them if he ran his tongue across the inside of his mouth, had he been brave enough to do it.

_You're a coward,_ a voice said, and Fay silently agreed. He was a coward. That was why everyone was in such pain now, because he was such a coward, because he loved to run. That's why Kurogane was suffering, too.

Kurogane….

Fay turned the mirror over sharply, making sure the action was quick so that his brain wouldn't have enough time to talk himself out of it. A frightened white face stared back at him, lips drawn tight, one eye wide and staring.

He turned the mirror back over slowly. It wasn't so bad, was it?

It was.

- - - - -

The knife glittered in Kurogane's hand, and all at once Fay realized he should have ran away while he had the chance, he should have never let himself be cornered like that. But he had been lost, somehow, in those dark eyes, with all those hidden words and messages and unspoken declarations behind him – he had been lost in trying to decode what they meant, in seeing if his name was lost in there somewhere among concern for Sakura and grimness over Syaoran. He wondered if he was important enough to be worth those sort of thoughts. He wondered what Kurogane thought of him, if he even thought of him at all, besides being the person he must now associate himself with, the person who had so willingly let go of his life – something he knew Kurogane despised.

_So despise me. He thought. Hate me. Please, hate me._

_I don't want you to love me._

_I don't want to forgive you._

"You can't run forever." Kurogane was saying, but his voice seemed strange and distant in Fay's hazy mind. "You're starving yourself."

"I'm not hungry, Kurogane."

"You haven't drank once since you turned, and then I had to pour it down your throat – "

"I'm not hungry." he repeated, silently begging the man to leave him be. He didn't want this sort of sacrifice. He didn't want this sort of help. He didn't even want to be alive right now -- he hadn't even wanted to survive. How could he accept blood from someone who was supposed to hate him?

_( who you wanted to hate you…)_

Who he _needed_ to hate him, in order for that straight path he had chosen to stay straight. He couldn't get closer, not after what had happened.

( _If you do…you might…_ )

And then the blade glided against his skin and at first there was nothing, no hint of red, no white lips of broken flesh. And then it slowly appeared, the dead skin around the wound, the first drops of blood, as if in slow motion…then the thick flow of it, coursing down his arm, horrible and wrong…wrong because it was so beautiful.

Wrong because he _wanted _it.

"Drink." Kurogane said harshly, thrusting his wrist out in front of Fay's face, and before he knew it that blood had called to him too quickly, too urgently, and he was too weak, and the senses and the smells and the instincts were overwhelming and it was all too much, as if someone had seized him around the neck and was tightening their fingers, suffocating him, and that blood was his only way out, his only air.

He leaned down.

At first he wasn't sure what to do. He didn't want to sink his teeth into his tanned flesh, he didn't want to suck – if he did, he might never stop, he might just keep going until Kurogane was pulling away but unable to pull away, struggling but unseen through the haze of relief that would overcome him. Finally he darted his tongue out to taste the divine substance and sighed a shuddering sigh, as if someone had taken a great weight off his shoulders at last.

He licked at the wound steadily, feeling his hands shaking slightly, afraid to reach up and hold Kurogane's arm steady (as if it would even _be_ steady, it would probably just make it shake like mad as well.) And then something happened, something strange and grand and horrible, no, just horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, because immediately his instincts said it was wrong and his instincts were all he could trust anymore.

There was an image – an image of a boy, and immediately he realized what was happening: _memories. _He was inside of Kurogane's thoughts.

The boy was small but with a frame that promised great height in later years, spiky black hair and skin not as tan as it was now. Little Kurogane took a step forward, and then, in the hazy atmosphere of Kurogane's invaded mind, he fell, tumbling, spots of blood appearing, scars dotting his wrists, and the word '_fate'_ seemed to flash at him in bold, red letters. He saw what appeared to be Kurogane's version of a younger Fay, a small boy with blonde hair and a icy blue kimono, waving him over anxiously with a smile that Kurogane thought was a fool's smile.

Kurogane was right, Fay thought sadly.

The images continued, some hazy, some agonizingly bright. There was the two of them, one biting the other's neck, drinking blood, vampirism in it's most natural state, he assumed. There was Kurogane, holding Fay's hand, kissing it like a gentleman, looking up at him with eyes that resembled his father's. There was Fay, his hair tied in ornaments like a princess, longer and pulled back delicately; a mockery of what Kurogane must have considered love to be.

_No…_ Fay thought. _No. These are your thoughts, your precious thoughts, I can't invade them, I can't…_

But there was no way to pull his mouth away from the blood, no way to stop the pictures from coming. Fay, the blue kimono gone, wearing white pants and nothing else. Fay, touching his light hair uncertainly, looking down at his belt loops and smiling a sly smile. Fay, reaching up toward a modern looking Kurogane, reaching up so that their lips met, dark tones to flushed pink cheeks, modest at first, then desperate, the ninja's tongue slipping into his mouth, his hands sliding around his waist and fingers dipping lower to touch the curves of his frame –

_What?_

A fantasy. An old thought from many nights ago, something he had conjured up before sleeping. A lithe body beneath a broader one, Kurogane moving steadily over him - _him_ - Kurogane, pinning his wrists beside his head and kissing his neck. He seemed more ethereal in the fantasy, his hair brighter and his face whiter and his eyes more Japanese. But it was him, surely him, nearly naked now, just as Kurogane's robes hung off him clumsily. The two twisted together, arms looped around his neck, whispering sweet nothings as Kurogane grunted something intelligible and pushed against him desperately, the thin sheet of sweet on his skin that seemed to make it shine –

_No!_

He pulled away from the bleeding wrist suddenly and the images cut themselves off, like a film pressed to pause. He was staring at the real-life Kurogane, who looked back at him with serious eyes that widened slowly. "What's wrong?"

What's _wrong?!_

"Nothing." Fay lied quickly, unable to shake the images of Kurogane's small fantasy out of his head. "Nothing…"

- - - -

At least now he knew what Kurogane thought of him, Fay thought bitterly.

Why was he surprised? He should have seen his coming. He had flirted with the man countless times before, he had swished his hips when he walked, he had pouted his lips, he had laughed fake laughs and stolen touches and generally played the man as if nothing really mattered but the act. But it was all in fun, wasn't it? It had all been a game, and he assumed Kurogane – dark, brooding Kurogane – had known that.

He was safe territory, Fay thought suddenly.

Kurogane would never fall in love with him. He had a princess back home, and a lack of interest in anything but returning. He was coarse, he was uncaring, he was to the point and easily angered and definitely not the sort of person to flirt back when someone like Fay made a pass at him. That was just it – he was safe territory. He was just a little bit of fun.

Right?

He was just fun, right? It was just a game, right?

_Right…?_

- - - - -

He knew that Sakura was gone, and that information pained him far more than he thought it would. He was worried for her, worried that the child would hurt herself. Worried that she would mess up, and that would be that – they would never see her again.

Kurogane was saving the last of their medication for her, he knew it. It hurt him, knowing that, knowing that Kurogane was that sort of person…but at the same time, he was glad, even though he knew Kurogane himself had serious wounds that should have been mended. It was all so confusing, it hurt his head to think about, but what was most confusing was Syaoran, and the fact that he had been fake.

He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to think about the dull, ebbing pain in his missing eye. He didn't want to think that Sakura might never return, or that Kurogane would never look at him the same, or that he would never look at himself the same way. It hurt so fiercely that he almost wished some other pain would come along, something to block out the agony of worrying. But nothing came, and he was alone with himself, hungry again but afraid to feed, lonely again but afraid to look at Kurogane, knowing that if he did, all he would see was the older man's fantasy. All he would see was himself pinned beneath him, and that look of compliance etched across his features.


	2. Dreams of Death

Fay wondered how long it would take for somebody like him to starve to death.

The memory of blood in his mouth was a constant pain in the back of his mind, like a ever-present dagger in his skin, the coppery taste of it, the breathe of air that accompanied it, the ebbing of the hunger deep within his stomach, a hunger that was far beyond any human hunger he had ever experienced. He wanted blood, that much he knew, but he didn't want Kurogane's blood.

( _Not after…_ )

He was thankful for the steady pulse of time that would sometimes drown out all coherent thoughts into nothing but a white static haze, and thankful for the other vampires keeping their distance, but most of all, he was thankful that Kurogane didn't try to make him feed nearly as often as expected. Perhaps he sensed something from their first feeding, something that told him it was best to keep some distance for a while. Perhaps it was his own instincts telling him what would be best.

But he did ask him to drink, inevitably, and that was the hardest part.

Ever since his first real meal, Kurogane had been too much of a temptation. He could see the beating veins in his wrist, in his neck, he could hear the blood pumping through his body -- he could _smell_ it. It was the same overwhelming sense of something larger than him pressing against his windpipe until he had to struggle to breathe, but this time he _did_ struggle – he struggled as fiercely as he could – because this time he did not _want_ to drink, he didn't _want_ to be a burden, and he definitely didn't want to see any more images from Kurogane's head. He wanted to be alone, and he wanted to starve, but most of all, he wanted to be alone. That wasn't so much to ask for, was it?

Kurogane let him be, for the most part. Fay assumed it was because there was nothing to say between them. He approached him with the knife in his back pocket several times already and Fay had slipped out of the room as best he could, hoping the Kurogane would not pursue. Most of the time, he didn't.

Most of the time.

It was the same excuses, the insisting lack of hunger (a lie, a terrible lie that he knew Kurogane could see right through) or saying he needn't worry (which was only half true, Fay could take care of himself, he just didn't want to. And that was his choice, wasn't it? To die?) But if all else failed he would simply say "Kurogane." and that dark, frustrated look would seep back into his eyes until he gave up and walked away.

Fay knew it wouldn't last forever. Kurogane was stubborn. But that didn't mean he couldn't avoid it for all he was worth.

After some time, Fay found the discarded mirror again and studied his reflection carefully, fighting away the childlike fear that threatened to consume him once more. He saw the same pale face, the same white fabric covering his eye, the same scared expression, the one that seemed to silently scream _'help me, I'm drowning.'_. Drowning…as if the acid rain had soaked into his skin and the water was all around him, suffocating him just like that invisible hand did whenever he smelled Kurogane's blood. D_rowning._

The vampire in the mirror never smiled back at him, no matter how many times he tried to curve his lips back upward. He was failing – even when he felt the first fake smile, the man in the mirror didn't return the gesture. 

Fay narrowed his eyes, searching, trying to find the right face, the right mask to slip on now that he was alone and had time to mull over his choices. He saw, at first, the broken soul, that ball of lead in his stomach that never seemed to go away, a screaming thing with jet black hair and white eyes and blood splattered across it's face.

And then he saw the fool, the jester, the idiot with the mask, the happy thing he had tried to pass himself off for. The smiling one that still had both his eyes and had fooled at least two of the other four in their party. The damned idiot that never saw what he had coming.

Then, himself in that icy blue kimono, his face whiter, eyes brighter the way only a fantasy image could make them, those hands entwined with his hands, those lips on his lips….

He placed the mirror down shakily. The words raced though his mind again; _I can't forgive him._

_I can't forgive him for taking pity on me._

_I can't forgive him for letting me live._

_If I do forgive him…I'll be even closer to him._

- - - - -

"Kurogane, don't." he said wearily.

The man looked down at him with those intense eyes, his broad shoulders unshaken, the knife in his pocket a silent declaration of what was to come. His mouth was pulled into a tight line – displeasure, Fay thought – and the black shards of his hair seemed messier than usual. Fay looked down at his feet, at last, because he could not stand to look into his eyes any longer. There was so many different secrets hiding in there, so many different emotions and so many different words. Fay didn't want to make out what those words were, in case one of them was his own name.

_Especially_ if one of them was his own name.

( _I don't deserve that kind of love._

_Not when I should have died yesterday._ )

"You're hungry." he said flatly.

"I'm not, Kurogane. I'm – "

Kurogane took a step forward, bringing their bodies only mere inches apart. Fay stopped suddenly as a feeling of claustrophobia seemed to set in, freezing him where he stood and making his throat close up before he could finish.

Paths seemed to stretch out again, all of different lengths and shapes, and Fay inwardly smiled a grim smile. He remembered this. Chose the easiest path, the quickest way out. _Run._

But he couldn't run. Kurogane was quick, and with that determination in his iron gaze, Fay know he would simply catch him and force the blood down his throat, if it came to that. He bit back a weak sigh and felt his body shake slightly with the effort of it.

"Please." he whispered the word as if it were a final plea before a death sentence.

Kurogane shifted his weight to the other foot and continued to pin him down with that gaze, like a butterfly to a corkboard. He could feel the eyes on him, boring into him, tearing him apart and caressing him and it was all so wrong he couldn't stand it anymore. He wanted to cry out, or shout, or turn his face away as if he had been slapped, but really, was it that bad? Was it that horrible to have someone want you? Was it so…?

…painful…?

"I'm responsible for your life now." he spoke, and Fay heard every word with stunning clarity, as if there was nothing left in the world but the two of them and what they must now do. "I won't let you die. If you don't want to live…I'll force you." His tone become something like steel at the end, hard and coarse and determined. Fay shook his head once –

( _they're your private thoughts, I can't --_ )

-- then stilled when he heard the clear sound of a blade slicing against skin, and the sharp feeling of instinct overcoming him.

( _You don't know that I can see them, can you? Your thoughts, your fantasies…_ )

"You're selfish." Kurogane said. "If you died, what would the kid and the princess do?" he stepped closer, and when Fay didn't move, he brought his wrist up to the mage's lips himself.

Fay watched the blood slip down the curve of his tanned forearm and realized that his fingers were shaking.

"Kurogane, I – "

_I what? I'm sorry, but I can't? I'm sorry, but I don't want to see you in love with me the way you were never supposed to be? Or just plain 'I'm sorry', sorry for making you suffer, sorry for being alive and causing that blood to flow in the first place, sorry, sorry…_

"…I…" he whispered so softly that he doubted Kurogane could understand.

"Shut up." Kurogane muttered, tangling thick fingers in his hair and guiding his head down. Fay gasped when the warm blood met his lower lip, then stilled as the flow of it gathered across his mouth, past the front row of teeth, too close now to pass away. He shivered once, dreading what was to come as he ran his tongue across his teeth and tasted the blood, then moved to Kurogane's bare wrist -- the open wound, the steady flow of red and the loud undercurrent of a thick, quickened heartbeat…

The thoughts began to pour in.

He saw in his mind's eye a beautiful creature, a vampire, with long extensions of fangs that touched the rose-petal contours of his lips. His golden hair was long and tied back lazily with red ribbon, and his body was half-cloaked in scarlet robes. He smiled a little, lopsidedly, then his white-blue eyes melted into pitch blackness, until they were like empty holes driven into his face…

"_Good morning, Kurogane…"_

Fay felt his entire body jerk with the effort to pull away, but the combined force of his own hunger and Kurogane's hand holding his head steady kept in him place.

The thought shifted and changed, like watery ink on paper, then dripped into a new scene, a new memory, something twisted with other fragments of thoughts and moments and scenes from a bigger picture, smaller puzzle pieces that still fit together. He saw a beautiful woman with long black hair tied behind her head gracefully, a woman in a elegant silver kimono with a white face and blood on her lips – a woman with a sword stabbed through her chest by a disembodied hand which seemed to float through an orb of blackness, materialized in the atmosphere.

Tears poured down her face, her eyes wide and pained, stunned – the expression only a dying human could wear – and her lips moved soundlessly, spelling something out, something…

She fell, and the sword was gone, and suddenly she wasn't a woman at all – it was a man, a blonde-haired man with long limbs and pale skin and eyes the color of a cloudless sky. The blood from the stab wound was turning his white attire steadily red.

"Don't die." A voice whispered, and Fay saw a dream-like Kurogane melt into the memory, some of his features distorted and blurry -- but it was the same spiky hair, the same broad shoulders and hands. "Don't you dare die..."

He kneeled down beside him, scooping him up into his arms. The dream-Fay smiled up at him brokenly, as if to say 'what's wrong? I'm not dead. I'm breathing, see?'

_But I can see right through your fake smile, mage._

He leaned down and kissed the watery image of Fay shakily on the mouth, and when nothing happened, he deepened the kiss, desperateness mixed with pain, the sort of kiss one might give if they knew it was their last.

_But I'm not dying. I'm right here – you made me live, remember? You forced me._

_You…_

The images of Kurogane's thoughts began to move slower and slower until they seemed to stop all together, and Fay realized numbly that the feeding was over and they were back to real life again. He stared at him, stunned, unsure of what to say or do or where to look. Kurogane watched him quietly with that pained, calculating stare that seemed to pierce straight through his chest and wrap iron fingers around his heart.

"You look scared." he said thinly.

"I'm fine." Fay heard himself say from some distance away. His thoughts raced until they seemed to move too fast for him to track, a blur of quickened voices and vibrant colors mixed with dark splashes of gray. _I'm not dead. I'm not dead. I'm breathing._

_Does he think of me that way, too? Think of me as the proxy of someone who has already died?_

_Is that why he kept me alive? Because he's failed to save someone in the past?_

But the puzzle pieces weren't fitting together in the haze of his confusion. He twisted them and turned them and tried to make them work, but they remained the same – faded and curled at the corners, bloodstained and ruined, unreadable.

_What am I to you?_

- - - - -

"You're wrong." said a voice at the doorway.

Fay sat with his hands folded in his lap and didn't look up. He knew the face that would greet him, and he didn't want to see him. Confusion and uncertainty assaulted him from all angles, and his head was throbbing with the effort to try to sort out the right thoughts from the wrong. _They were just images_, one voice would say, _just passing thoughts – they don't necessarily mean it's what's true._ And then another would insist that he saw them himself, and what better proof would he need? Words could lie, he knew that firsthand, but thoughts were different.

The silence stretched out between them. Fay dared a small glance upward and saw the still-healing scar on the man's wrist with newfound guilt and another onslaught of Kurogane's memories.

( _Kisses, fantasy kisses, himself, skin glowing white, sparkling with beauty, smiling down at Kurogane with willing eyes, kissing him sweetly, like the carefree thing he had passed himself off to be…_ )

"Your wrong." Kurogane repeated, taking a step into the room. His footfall seemed magnified in the heavy silence of the atmosphere around them. "Whatever it is that you're thinking, you're wrong."

"Kurogane knows what I'm thinking?" he asked silkily.

"I know you're thinking something messed up." he answered grimly. "I can tell. Your eyes…"

Fay lifted his face completely and met those charcoal orbs of blackness, just to try and prove his point. "There's nothing wrong." he said steadily.

"You're a terrible liar." he shot back, his voice deep and pulsing with a determination. Fay glanced back down at his hands and tried to clear his head from all the different possibilities that bombarded him. "I can't forgive you." he said at last. "For not letting me die."

"Then don't." Kurogane said, beginning to turn around now. The silhouette of him – his spiked hair, the muscles in his arms and the curve of his hips and waist – was like a dark scribble on a piece of white paper. "Just live."


End file.
